HTTP status and error codes

Bigin APIs use standard HTTP response status codes and error descriptions when informing users/applications about the status and error of an API call. The HTTP status code in the response header separates the errors of the request, while the response body contains additional details providing information about the error codes.

Error and status codes

The HTTP status codes categorize the errors of the request and indicate whether the response server executes the request or not.

Bigin API categorizes the status codes into the following types:

• 2xx - This code returns when the request is successful.
• 3xx - This code returns when the client needs to take further action to serve their request.
• 4xx - This code returns when the request throws an error.
• 5xx - This code returns when there is an issue with the server.

The following table contains the possible status codes that return when you make an API request to Bigin:

Representation of error response

The error response can be viewed in two formats such as HTTP response and JSON response. The HTTP response contains the header details of the response such as HTTP status codes, metadata of the response, and so on. On the other hand, the JSON response contains details about the error in the human-readable format.

For example, the error format for HTTP status code 400 looks like this:

HTTP response

HTTP/1.1 400
Server: ZGS
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:17:56 GMT
Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 204
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: 3d223cf300=6cd7d9b17e6c6d0feaf53c99d1891ab5; Path=/
X-XSS-Protection: 1
X-Frame-Options: sameorigin
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=FC7042CB324F8FB882F9D0C21FCECD2A; Path=/; Secure; HttpOnly
Content-Language: en-US

JSON response

{
"code": "INVALID_REQUEST",
"details": {},
"message": "Unable to process your request. please verify whether you have entered proper method name, parameter and parameter values.",
"status": "error"
}

The JSON format of the error response contains the following details:

Also, Bigin APIs use the generic status codes for several different errors. In such cases, the error response in JSON format contains the machine-parsable code parameter that separates the failure of the requests and provides the respective error details. This allows you to understand the errors better and take necessary steps to avoid them.

The following table provides the information about API error codes and respective descriptions: